Just installed FB 1.05 on XP platform under CS2 and CS3 and everything worked fine. Downloaded the pdf manual and read it. To get fully up to speed in a quick fashion on using FB, it would really help to have a video and written tutorials showing specific examples of how FB can do the job its made to do, including working on landscapes, portraits, etc. In my quick scan of what's available, I'm not seeing any such tutorials. If they do exist, please point me to them and you might want to include them in your link page. Thank you. Walter

Thank you for your reply. I think that a tutorial based on examples of FB sharpening would be immensely helpful to all users. This would permit everyone to take maximum advantage of the great program that the FocalBlade is. The objective of selling FB should be to get every user up to full speed (expert level) ASAP. Why hasn't that been done by showing users of examples of how it can be done? It isn't enough to show examples of before and after; you need to show how one got from A to B.

FYI, I have done a several day search on the internet of all review articles on FB and printed them out for detailed reading. They are not referenced on this website and one would have to wonder why not because they are all quite favorable and have some useful hands on info. Unfortunatelely, the info they provide is not a substitute for a tutorial by example. BTW, the reviews came from: Luminous-landscape.com, outbackphoto.com, shuttertalk.com, goinside.com.

In brief, I am really hoping that a tutorial by example section can be created ASAP to help all of us take maximum advantage of FB. Without this kind of tutorial, folks will not be able to take maximum advantage of FB. Who can best teach us how to best use FB in all its forms, from intermediate to advanced ? None other than the creator of FB.

BTW, there is a contest section on this website on best images, again without an explanation of how the person went about enhancing the image. What about a sharpening contest with the participants showing their steps to get to their final product?

So it remains to be seen if anything is coming to come of this request for a tutorial by example. Plain and simple, it is not enough to reference the manual that exists presently. If the manual is upgraded as suggested above, then we'll all have something. Honestly, I am not going to hold my breath because I don't think there is the motivation to do the extra work of an example tutorial based on the reply to my initial request, but I would like to be proven wrong. Thank you.

Thanks for your enthusiasm. These four FocalBlade reviews and many others are mentiond on the Review page of the FocalBlade product pages.

As Version 2 is already on the way, it does not make much sense to create extensive tutorials for the current Version 1. But I will keep it in mind for the manual of Version 2 and also add images to the tutorials in the manual.

From my experience I am quite sure that a contest like you suggest it would not bring many entries (or at least not many of interesting quality), so I do not think that it would be really worth it.

Based on your response that example tutorials are not going to be done for ver 1.05 and are a possibility for ver 2.0, the million dollar question is- when can we realisticly expect to get our hands on FB ver 2.0? What will be the upgrade policy, esp for someone like myself who purchased ver 1.05 only this week?

You were absolutely correct that reviews of FB are listed on this website with excerpts and links, but have you recently tried to access them by clicking on the links? I would have to say that conservatively over half are expired links or not in English. Did any of these expired links contain reviews that showed examples of how to use FB? If so, it might be helpful to list the full actual reviews rather than listing the inoperable links if they were good teaching articles and used examples of FB use.

Provided that the price of the new major version is the same, it is our policy is to give new major versions for free to people who bought it within the last six month before the new major version was released. Otherwise they only have to pay the difference in price. Minor version updates are always free. FocalBlade 2 is planed to be released this summer.

Most of the links to the reviews still work. You are right that a few do not work anymore. I will remove them. Some of the reviews were only posted in paper magazine and not on the web. Some were also in a different language. The reviews are not meant as tutorials and they hardly are. The Reviews page ist just meant to cite some press opinions.